Top 10 Biggest Website Redesigns of All Time

In honor of the new FreelanceFolder redesign, we decided to create a list of the top 10 most beautiful, most dramatic, and some cases just biggest website redesigns we could find. Some of these designs showcase monumental leaps in design, whereas others portray a more subdued and calculated approach to redesigning a major website.

Let’s take a look at the list:

#10. Yahoo

After going through a number of big redesigns over the years, Yahoo has found itself in one of the most difficult positions it has ever faced. This new redesign represents a serious effort to help stem the long, slow slide into obscurity.

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New Design:

#9. Amazon

Amazon is one of those companies that redesigns on a daily basis, so it’s sometimes difficult to even tell when they’ve made a big design change. That said, there was a really big step a few years ago when Amazon made the move from flat buttons to the new rounded interface we are used to today.

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#8. LinkedIn

Always a foundational website in the social media world, representing professionals and business, LinkedIn has never really found the same growth as the more personal and interactive websites. This redesign represents a few small steps in that direction — toward interactivity — along with a number of important usability enhancements.

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New Design:

#7. Facebook

This redesign is here not because it is visually dramatic, but because Facebook is the second highest trafficked website in the world, and even layout changes like this are enormous when you consider how many users they effect. Not to mention, it seems every time Facebook redesigns something there is an enormous outcry from users, both positive and negative.

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#6. Ebay

Even though they are well past their gloried-times, Ebay is still a major player on the internet. Over the past several years they have been tweaking and adjusting their homepage for maximum impact and usability. I think it is actually getting better.

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#5. Whitepages.com

Much less popular than many of the pages in this list, Whitepages.com is still fairly large compared to most sites. Combine that with a substantial (and expensive) redesign, and they come in at number five.

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#4. MySpace

Despite losing to Facebook in the website battle of the century, MySpace has shown that they are still capable of growth and improvement. This redesign is an example of them flexing some design muscle.

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#3. WordPress.org

In a list about redesigns it would be practically criminal to leave out the web platform that designers love most. The homepage of WordPress.org hasn’t changed much over the years, but their last redesign seriously improved the looks of the site and helped bring them inline with modern styles.

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#2. Twitter.com

From a company that seems only capable of angering its users with change, this was actually one major redesign that everyone seemed to love. Not only is this a visually impressive change, it also represents a fundamental shift in focus of the company towards search.

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#1. Whitehouse.gov

Nevermind the cultural and other changes that are associated with this site, from a purely visual standpoint this is a striking redesign of one of the world’s most heavily trafficked websites.

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More Web Design Resources from FreelanceFolder

If you like this list of website redesigns, you might also enjoy these other web design posts from FreelanceFolder:

I agree with Lád’a that Apple was worthy of note. Another very significant change came just yesterday with Ecademy. While not well known in North America, it is a very well known social media site elsewhere. They completely revitaized their look, and jumped from an exceptionally old interface to a much more friendly and modern look. Kudos to them, and to you for this post. Thanks!

Nice collection, although most of these have been re-designed primarily because of Usability issues.
The Whitehouse site is insane. I met the artist and creative team that created that during the last 6 weeks of obama’s campaign.

The MySpace redesign is a prime example of over-designing imo. They never seem to hit the mark, not to mention their users pages are hideous…

I love the new White House web site, from a purely visual standpoint it is beautiful but it is also a lot easier to navigate and is being successfully used as a powerful political device as well (whether or not that is appropriate is another debate, haha). Also agreeing with an above poster about the USPS website.

Lots of interesting changes and adaptations of different websites. Its amazing how much people react to change though, particularly thinking of the Facebook redesigns. But if they didn’t make those changes they would simply get left behind.

I especially like the whitehouse.gov redesign. In particular, the way they updated the old president with a newer, more modern one was an excellent choice – both aesthetically and from a user friendly standpoint – in my opinion.

I agree with Lád’a that Apple was worthy of note. Another very significant change came just yesterday with Ecademy. While not well known in North America, it is a very well known social media site elsewhere. They completely revitaized their look, and jumped from an exceptionally old interface to a much more friendly and modern look. Kudos to them, and to you for this post. Thanks!

This is interesting, but some more analysis would be useful. I’m not a website or page designer, nor am I a graphic artist, and it’s not obvious to me what the intended benefit or impact is of each change made to the example websites. I’m sure someone knows…perhaps they could chime in?

I remember the eBay one. It happened during a few days when I was using it quite alot. It’s interesting to see how most of the redesigns adopted the same graphical look of rounded, 3 dimensional buttons (with the obvious adoption of the “Web 2.0″ look.
The WordPress site I think looks fantastic these days.

I am really impressed by these top 10 biggest website redesigns of all time. These are simply stunning, unbelievable, exciting and very very useful. Thanks a lot for posting such an interesting information.

It is always encouraging to find them improving their presence with these palpating changes around the web. I think the post presents this magnificent list of these biggest website redesigns. It is a great work.

Since website redesign is nothing but updating your company vision, mission, values and the goals, it would be very exciting to learn about these top website redesigns. It is a useful and interesting post. thanks.

[…] Top 10 Biggest Website Redesigns of All Time Some of these designs showcase monumental leaps in design, whereas others portray a more subdued and calculated approach to redesigning a major website. […]

[…] it simple – do not try to over-complicate your website redesign. Some of the largest site redesigns that have transpired have been simple in nature. In some extreme cases a drastic change may be […]

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